


Delilah

by Chellendora



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Horror, Psychological Horror, Skydiving, Time Travel, mandela effect, time slips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 17:01:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21991732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chellendora/pseuds/Chellendora
Summary: Delilah is content with her life - for the most part - until it starts changing on her. Something is coming to get her, and she doesn't know why, but the how will rip time to its very seam.
Relationships: Original Character/Original Character





	1. Prologue

Delilah didn’t notice the first time she slipped into a different timeline. She was driving to work, coffee in one hand and steering wheel in the other. Sleep-bleared eyes focused straight ahead so she missed it when all of the road signs changed. By the time she looked for her exit, they were normal again. She veered right on Exit 20 for Monroe City, clueless that the sign had been vandalized with blood before, covering the name of the city with the words:

TURN BACK  
OR BE CONSUMED


	2. The Tractor Was Blue

The second time slip happened on the same day as the first.

Delilah Campbell worked at a tiny airport nestled on the outskirts of Monroe City. There was one runway, which was last paved in the late 80s, and two large hangars, one on one end and side of the asphalt and the other on the opposite end and side. As she pulled into the little parking lot by one of the hangars, she could see the door pulled open and the props of the King Air aircraft glistening in the sun as it was pulled slowly outside by an old red tractor. Driving the tractor was the owner and operator of the airport, a man in his late 60s who would most assuredly die the same day he decided to stop working. A couple other people were milling about inside the hangar, but it was too early for anyone else.

“Mornin’, Delilah,” Moni said sleepily when she entered the little office in the corner of the hangar. A counter took up half of the walls and this counter was covered with various folders and papers and a handful of USB flash-drives. Moni sat in an old wicker chair in the corner, sipping from a giant ceramic mug of coffee that read DON’T TALK TO ME UNTIL I’VE HAD MY GO-GO JUICE and reading the funnies from yesterday’s paper. She was an older, squat woman who used too much dry shampoo on a good day and smelled like ham and cigarettes on a bad one.

“Morning, Moni,” she replied, dropping her backpack under the counter and sitting down on the stool. In front of her was a window set into the wall to speak with customers, but for now it remained closed. She pulled the office planner toward her and started to flip to today’s date. “What’s planned for today?” 

“Big group of tandems coming in in about an hour, some college group or something, ten in all,” Moni replied. She spoke quickly, clipping each word short. “The fun jumpers will start showing up around noon.”

“Do we have enough instructors called in?” Delilah asked, writing the information Moni fed to her down in the logbook. Moni used to write everything until her arthritis got too bad, but she was still the best at gathering the day’s events together. 

“Is Chase back in town?” Moni asked with the tone of someone who already knew the answer.

Delilah sighed. “No, not yet. His flight home is Sunday.”

“Then no, we don’t have enough instructors called in.” Moni slurped her coffee, a sound that irritated and amazed Delilah because she could see the steam rising from the cup’s orifice. Imagining the burn, she licked at her lips involuntarily. 

The office phone rang and Moni picked it up immediately. “Skydive Monroe City, experience the thrill with us! How may I help you?” Delilah took this chance to gather her daybook and pen, pull on her Skydive Monroe City jacket, and head out into the hangar to start preparations for the large group on their way. 

One of the early birds hanging out around the hangar was the pilot, Tommy. He sat leaned back in a zero-gravity chair, his hat pulled down over his eyes to make it look like he was asleep. Delilah walked up and kicked the bottom of his shoe, hard enough to make him jump awake.

“Whoa! What’s it?” He grabbed his hat off his face and looked up at Delilah with bright green eyes. “What’d you do that for, Delilah?”

“’Cause you’re sleeping on the job,” she replied back, a grin trying to split her face against her will. Tommy was a dollface and he knew it. “We have a big group of tandems coming in soon, you need to help Bill get the Cessna out of here and the King Air ready.”

“It’s always about planes and people falling out of them with you, isn’t it?” Tommy teased, standing slowly from the chair and stretching, like a cat in no hurry to come to your outstretched hand.

“It’s kind of my job.”

“Hey, Delilah!” someone shouted across the hangar, and she turned to see one of the instructors had shown up. “What’s it like in New York City?”

“Ugh,” she groaned, rolling her eyes. “Gear checks, now, Stuart. Ten tandems in 45 minutes. And we’re short staffed again.”

“Sheeeew…” he whistled but didn’t object, making his way toward the double doors marked EQUIPMENT ROOM. “Where do these people come from?”

“Today it’s the local college,” Moni called from the office window. She had opened it now and was leaning on the counter to look out. Her mousy blonde hair lifted and fell from the light breeze coming off the runway, and her red sweater perfectly matched the color of the words MANIFEST above her. “But I’m still trying to figure out where we found you, Stu.”

“In the swamp, of course!” Stu exclaimed cheerfully, and with a fangy grin he disappeared behind the equipment doors.

“I thought Chase would be back already?”

“I only dropped him off at the airport yesterday, he won’t be back till Sunday,” Delilah explained, quickly writing down in her daybook that Stuart was doing the morning gear checks on the tandem parachutes. 

“Yesterday?” Tommy sounded genuinely puzzled. “I thought you dropped him off the day before yesterday, on Monday?”

The moment he said it, her mind seemed to click into place and suddenly she was unsure why she had thought it was yesterday. She shrugged, dismissing it with a wave of her hand. “My days run together sometimes.”

“I know that feeling,” he said compassionately. He patted her shoulder and stretched one more time as he headed out toward the airplane. Bill was driving the tractor back inside now, the blue paint peeling and chipping like a camo pattern across the old machinery.

Wait – blue? She shook her head and looked again. Sure enough, the tractor was blue. “Since when is the tractor blue?” she blurted out.

Tommy stopped, turning to look at her with a queer expression. “What do you mean? It’s always been blue.”

Delilah felt a cold chill race down her spine. “I could have sworn – ”

“More than your days are running together, Deli,” Tommy said, not unkindly. “You feeling all right?”

She nodded, trying to dismiss her notion that the tractor was red. But it HAD been red when she drove up today, right? Surely, she wasn’t mistaking the color of the tractor she saw every single day.

But when she looked at it again, it was faded cobalt blue, and her brain was still convinced that it should have been red.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are much appreciated, *constructive* criticism is also welcomed. Thanks for reading!


End file.
